The Lady of Big Shanty eBook

“Keep your mouth shut!” commanded a voice
close to her ear; then the arms lifted her bodily
out of bed and swung her clear of the floor; a glimmering
tongue of flame licking up the stairway revealed the
features of the man in whose arms she struggled.

“Holcomb!” she started to cry out, but
the acrid fog closed her throat.

“Keep your mouth shut—­do you hear!”
he muttered in her ear; “we’ll be out
of this in a minute.” He lunged with her
headlong over the smashed door and reached the top
of the flight, feeling for the first step cautiously
with his foot. She screamed this time, beating
his face with her clenched hands.

“Keep your mouth shut,” he mumbled; “you’ll
strangle.”

Her arm became limp. “Where’s Sam?—­where’s—­”
she pleaded feebly. Then a dull roar rang in
her ears; she lay unconscious, a dead weight in his
arms.

Holcomb began to stagger on the bottom step, reeling
like a drunkard; again he proceeded, stumbling on
through the passageway leading to Blakeman’s
pantry. The ceiling of varnished yellow pine above
him rained down sputtering drippings of flame; they
burned his neck, his hands, his hair. He dashed
on through a pantry of sizzling blisters, past a glowing
wall in a hot fog of yellow smoke, one burned hand
covering her mouth. Then he turned sharply to
the left, striking his shoulder heavily against a
corner beam!

The blow made him conscious of a man crawling on his
hands and knees toward them. The man rose—­groped
blindly like an animal driven to bay and rushed straight
at him.

“Give her to me, Billy,” he hissed in
his ear, “Quick—­save yourself!”
Then a burned fist struck straight out and missed—­struck
again and Holcomb fell senseless.

With the quickness of a cat the man caught the woman
in his arms, groped his way to the open, laid her
prostrate body on the charred grass—­sprang
back into the swirl and choke of the deadly gas and
smoke, and the next instant reappeared with the stunned
and half-conscious Holcomb on his back, his hair singed,
his clothes on fire; then he tripped and fell headlong.

The shock brought Holcomb to his senses. The
man was stooping over him, his ear close to his cheek.

“It’s me, Billy—­Bob Dinsmore.
I didn’t want to hurt ye, but I see ye couldn’t
manage her and yerself and thar warn’t no other
way; ye’d both been smothered. She’s
all right—­they’re tendin’ to
her.”

Holcomb clutched at the hide-out’s sleeve.

“No—­I dassent stay—­nobody
seen me but you”—­and he was swallowed
up in the shadows.

Two men and a girl now swept past the half-dazed man,
halted for a moment, and with a cry of joy from the
girl, aided by the trapper and the Clown, dragged
him clear of the rain of burning embers.

When Holcomb regained consciousness Margaret was bending
over him.

“No, Billy—­don’t move, dear.
Please, oh, please—­” and she kissed
his cheek—­two soft little kisses—­the
kisses he had remembered in his dream. Then she
left him.